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The Awful German Language (1880)

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Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#281

Post by marcus_holmes »

coldtea wrote: post #202
marcus_holmes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently started learning Khmer (Cambodian). It's an awesome language. No tenses (all assumed from context... if something happened in the past, you say it happened "already", and there's a single modifier to all verbs to indicate they will happen). No genders, at all (there's no "he/she/they" problem). The numbering system is simple adn consistent, and it's applied to months and hours ("one month" is a measure of…

> It's an awesome language An awesome language to learn easily or to express yourself with full capacity? Those could be different qualities...

To continue with my coding analogy... German is like Java (huge, sprawling, full of conceptsextendedwaypastthepointofsanity), English is like C++ (mashed together out of two different languages and made to work, mostly), Khmer is like Go (favouring simplicity over expressiveness).

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#282

Post by djur »

interfixus wrote: post #124
amelius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I like about English is that it naturally supports gender neutrality. For example: "the user should upload their photo, and then they should press enter", instead of "the user should upload his/her photo and then he/she should press enter".

This is just a very recent conditioning. Doesn't (yet?) work for all of us. I cringe whenever I encounter this strange use of plural they to designate a single individual. In fact, I consider the old convention of 'he' in certain context meaning 'he or she' far less a rape of linguistic integrity.

Singular 'they' is not that recent. It's first attested in the 14th century and has been a subject of linguistic peevishness since the 1800s. The idea that 'he' is preferable to 'they' for a person of unknown gender is actually one of those modern inventions like the prohibition of split infinitives.

Also, you should maybe consider an analogy less extreme than _sexual assault_ for people using grammatical constructs you don't prefer.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#283

Post by interfixus »

djur wrote: post #282
interfixus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a very recent conditioning. Doesn't (yet?) work for all of us. I cringe whenever I encounter this strange use of plural they to designate a single individual. In fact, I consider the old convention of 'he' in certain context meaning 'he or she' far less a rape of linguistic integrity.

Singular 'they' is not that recent. It's first attested in the 14th century and has been a subject of linguistic peevishness since the 1800s. The idea that 'he' is preferable to 'they' for a person of unknown gender is actually one of those modern inventions like the prohibition of split infinitives. Also, you should maybe consider an analogy less extreme than _sexual assault_ for people using grammatical constructs…

Okay, never knew. I shall have to look into that. Point the point stands, the useage does irk me, but probably more from its latter-day signal value than from any deepseated linguistic belief. I did sort of allow for that interpretatation with my paranthetical yet?.

As for the rape expression. Now that usage certainly has quite a history. I find it occasionally useful, and shall keep using it whenever it suits my fancy, currently heightened sensitivities notwithstanding.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#284

Post by h1d »

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

For English, aside from do/does useless distinguishment, the lack of a gender neutral noun for a person usually make people write in a way "he/she". You could say, "the person" but it's long.

And months should be represented as numbers instead of names in spoken languages too which is easier to use and remember to have a globally common form.

Also, as a Japanese, I'm not sure if singular and plural forms make much sense as we mostly don't have it and I doubt it's any source of confusion.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#285

Post by h1d »

projektfu wrote: post #233
lolc wrote: post #182

As a native speaker I can confirm the observations of Mark Twain. What is ignored in such humorous tirades is that every human speaker will push information density to the very limit of understandability. In every language. They will use all the tools available. Sure, the German case system is getting weaker as the centuries go by. And in some situations you will wonder why it's used still. But that doesn't mean the…

Don't know German, but I've learned Spanish. I feel that English is easy because it's relatively hard for a learner to accidentally completely change the meaning of a sentence and make themselves misunderstood or, worse, say something offensive. In Spanish, a single letter changes the subject from him to me, the mood from indicative to subjunctive, etc. The use of pronouns in Spanish is especially difficult for Engli…

Same for Japanese I guess. 1 letter change and your tone can suddenly become aggressive but of course when non natives speak, people will try to understand their intentions.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#286

Post by dragonwriter »

skrause wrote: post #246
willyt wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is not easy: Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s wr…

People often confuse the English language and the English spelling. The English language is actually really easy to learn because it has a very simple grammar. The English spelling is a different problem set because it often reflects how a word was pronounced centuries ago. It has no connection to the current pronunciation, so learning the correct spelling of a word is basically like learning Chinese characters.

> People often confuse the English language and the English spelling.

The written language is a subset of the language, spelling is a subset of written language; so, English spelling is part of the English language, there is no confusion.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#287

Post by jnurmine »

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen."

For a Finnish speaker, the pronunciation of most languages seems illogical, because things are pronounced differently as they are written, depending on the word itself. One might think: why are they so illogical? Of course, this is not how native speakers of German, English, etc. see things; for them, the words are spoken exactly as they are written, as they are used to it being so.

When I was learning English at school, I thought it was odd to sprinkle all the small articles and words all over the speech. And this thing with British vs. US spelling. Later, when I studied German, I thought there were so many concrete rules, yet every rule was followed by a number of exceptions.

I don't think one can say grammar/pronunciation of language x is universally difficult or easy. It depends so much on the linguistic background of the learner. For example: those skilled only in Japanese will likely have an easier time learning Chinese than me. But I will likely be able to pick up Estonian or proper Danish/Norwegian easier than them because of my background.

PS. Speaking of illogical things: "pronunciation" and "pronounce". Why not "pronunce" or "pronounciation"?

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#288

Post by vsl »

apo wrote: post #73

English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pro…

> I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information.

I’ve never understood the need to pronounce completely differently from writing - and irregularly, too - as you guys do in English. Or throwing the the everywhere, or having a gazillion of bizarre tenses.

English is simpler in some ways, terribly overcomplicated in others.

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#289

Post by jnurmine »

yesenadam wrote: post #158
Koshkin wrote: post #34

German is an amazing, beautiful language. With not much of the vocabulary borrowed from other languages, words actually make sense. From that perspective, German can be seen as the modern equivalent of Latin, and if I were to choose only one language to remain on the entire planet, it would be German (sorry English, Chinese and Spanish). Its sounds are easier for non-native speakers to pronounce - especially compared…

Latin is a dead language, and we did not have a will to adopt it as a universal language I'm not sure what you mean by this. I used to believe that "Latin is a dead language" - until I learnt more about the subject. It was spoken everywhere in the Roman Empire, and the local differences evolved into the Romance languages. They are what Latin is today. And it (the relatively fixed 'classical' version anyway) was a uni…

Latin is still spoken today, on the radio of all things. The Finnish national broadcaster broadcasts Nuntii Latini, or the News in Latin.

The interesting part is they do not invent new words but find existing Latin expressions and combine existing words. That alone speaks a lot of how universal the language was and perhaps still is.

Link: https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339

An example of the Indonesian tsunami catastrophy: "Plus mille quadringenti homines perierunt, cum fluctus tsunami ex motu terrae ortus in insulam Sulawesi Indonesiae (28.9.) incidisset. Magistratus timent, ne numerus victimarum in multa milia ascendat. Maxime afflicta est urbs Palu et proxima illi Donggala. In regione motui terrae et fluctui exposita circiter sescenta milia hominum habitant."

Re: The Awful German Language (1880)

#290

Post by vsl »

klodolph wrote: post #270
zvrba wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious how you can figure out from context whether you can figure out something from context. Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not. Take a hypothetical phone conversation, an example that nobody has managed to explain to me satisfactorily: A: "Where are you?" B: "I'm in [the/a/(nothing)] shower." People tell me that "the" is the correct thing to use. But A is none the wiser; B…

> Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not. This doesn't work in English, because both speakers are not assumed to have the same knowledge of context. The "the"/"a" distinguishes between something that describes and something that also determines. Alice: Did you see any of those movies? Bob: I saw the good one. In this sentence, Bob is saying that "good one" can be figured out from conte…

This is an example where it plays a role. In Slavic languages, you would say something like “I saw that good one” (inserting a definitive article substitute) or “the one I saw was good”; in English, you don’t need the latter phrasing with “a”; indeed, it is somewhat artificial example.

What the parent post was saying was well described by his examples of where the article is obviously superfluous and doesn’t provide contextual information - which is the majority of their uses. There are situations where articles carry information (nobody disputes that I think), but they are used far more frequently as grammatical filler.

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